All These Years
by TheLaughingCat
Summary: In his old age he found himself forgetting two of the most important values in life: patience and trust." The story of the Doctor and his two children. Rated for violence and dark themes.


**Author's Note: **This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, but I'm very familiar with the show. (I'm a tad obsessed.)  
Anyway, I promise that the children and everything else will be explained in future chapters, you just have to be patient. Please review. )

**All These Years  
**In his old age he'd found himself forgetting two of the most important virtues in life: patience and trust.

**Chapter One - **Patience and Trust

A small girl was sitting completely still in the Captain's Chair of the Tardis, save for her long, gangly legs, which swung back and forth like a pendulum. Her eyes stared straight ahead of her. Their azure blue color was fogged over by thought, and they had a distant look in them. Her hair, a rich shade of dark brown, was tied up into a precise bun on the back of her head, but one loose strand dangled in front of her eyes. The green light radiating off of the console illuminated her pale, sharp face in the otherwise dark room. She now had her eyes trained expectantly on the door.

A young boy lay at the feet of the girl. He was fiddling with something at the base of the console, and he had his head propped up on his right palm. His hair, even darker than his sister's, was messy and stuck up at odd places, and he would run his fingers through it unconsciously when he was stumped about something he was fixing. His feet, clad in a pair of converse at least five sizes too large for him, were in constant motion, beating the air with force.

"How long has it been?" the boy asked his sister for the umpteenth time. He looked up at her from his position on the ground.

The girl did not acknowledge that he had spoken until a few minutes had passed. She shook her head slightly and her mouth, a flat line across her face, twitched downward. "Patience, Aiden. Do not doubt that he will be back." When she spoke her voice was soft, almost a whisper, but strong as well, and wise, too.

"I don't doubt his return, I have complete trust in him," Aiden told her indignantly, tapping the screwdriver in his hands against the screw he had just finished adjusting.

"You trust him completely and yet you only met him yesterday," she commented. She seemed to suddenly notice what he had been doing for the past hour, and her frown deepened. "Has he given you permission to fix his ship?"

"Uh, no," the boy admitted hesitantly. "But he will thank me when he sees the repairs I've made. She was a mess before," he added with surety.

His sister just shook her head again and returned to staring at the door, which hadn't opened for twelve hours.

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The Doctor raced down the street, his head pounding ferociously. He had been gone far too long. The two children probably wouldn't be worried, but it was rude to stay out any longer.

The thing was, it was horribly easy to become distracted when you were trying to single-handedly save the world from an alien empire while baby-sitting your two children that you only yesterday discovered existed. Somehow, though, he was coping. He was the Doctor after all, and the current circumstances were only a little bit too high on the strangeness scale.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware of how much time he had remaining, time steadily ticking away with every second. However, he had never been one to allow time to rule him.

When at last the familiar blue box came into view he slowed to a rushed trot and then stopped in front of the door, pausing to stroke the splintered wood lovingly. Through everything he'd been through, during all of the lonely and long years, she'd been there with him, weathering out the storms. She was his one constant, his rock, if you'd like, and here she was yet again, offering undying faith and companionship through a difficult time. He could not ask for better.

Inhaling deeply, he swung the door open and stepped inside onto the rusty grating of the interior TARDIS. A pair of dark brown irises greeted him rather intensely from the other side of the room as soon as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. Their owner said nothing, only nodded slightly by way of welcoming his return. He couldn't help thinking that it might have been a blessing that at least one of the children hadn't inherited his verbal tendencies.

He gave a two-fingered wave and grinned warmly at the young girl, said a quick hello, and then glanced around for her other half. After a few seconds his gaze fell downwards, where a pair of his own shoes was sticking up from underneath the flooring. He couldn't help but smile affectionately at the boy who was so intent in his work that he hadn't even noticed that the Doctor had entered the room. Quietly he tiptoed over to Aiden and crouched down behind him, extending a finger until it hovered right above the child's shoulder. In an instant he lunged forward and squeezed the boy's shoulder hard, causing him to whip backwards, shoot up above the grating and then kick at the time lord reflexively. The Doctor gasped as he just barely avoided a possible injury, and held his hands up in surrender.

"Whoa! S'just me, the harmless ole Doctor!" he chuckled. "I didn't mean to catch you off-guard. Sorry about that. Nice reflexes, by the way." Aiden bent over laughing, the corners of his eyes creasing with laughter. When he had finished he straightened up and scratched a lightly freckled cheek as he caught his breath.

"Nice face you had there, after I kicked," he sniggered. "Did you underestimate me?"

"Well," the Doctor replied, "I wouldn't say underestimate, exactly, but I definitely didn't expect a reaction that dramatic. Nor did I expect you to have such a strong kick." Aiden crossed his arms and puffed up his chest slightly, basking in the Doctor's approval. From the captain's chair his sister shook her head, clearly not amused by the exchange. As if sensing her disapproval, the Doctor turned and walked over to her, shifting into a more serious mode immediately.

"No out-of-the-ordinary readings while I was gone, Eva?" he asked, sliding his spectacles onto the bridge of his thin nose and peering at the computer screen intently.

"Nothing," she replied quietly.

"And you were gone for quite some time, too," added her brother in annoyance. "What took so long?"

"Mm, yea, sorry about that; there were a few distractions along the way. Most of them took the form of rogue Kheprion disciples." He rubbed a red spot on his arm, drawing tiny specks of blood out of the two small holes. "Rassilion, those things can bite."

"But you did retrieve it eventually, right?" Aiden pressed expectantly, his fingers tapping incessantly on the top of the console. The Doctor had noticed him doing this when he was anything but calm; nervous, irritated, excited, bored.

"Yes," he answered defensively. "Course I did. It's right here." He reached deep into his pocket and bit his tongue in concentration, digging through all of the miscellaneous items that had managed to cover the desired object whilst he had been running back home. Finally he managed to uncover it, and withdrew his hand triumphantly, raising the device up proudly.

Eva squinted at the small machine curiously, studying its rusty surface and irregular shape. It had three indents where it was obvious that you were to place your fingers in, and they branched off from a small disk-like figure. On the front of that base an antennae was attached. The thing was coated in a metallic substance, but in many areas that layer had been scratched off, revealing a rough copper color. Wires were visible running along the inside where a little rut seemed to be made for them to fit in, and they were kept together neatly by thin rubber bands.

"It doesn't look very special," Aiden commented. "I like it, though."

"And you should," the Doctor told him, his glasses slipping down further. "It's going to assist us in saving the world," he winked. This brought a smile to the boy's face, and he scampered over to his father's side, removing it from the alien's hands and inspecting it more closely. The Doctor couldn't help but feel delighted to have Aiden with him at that moment. Initially he had been shocked when the children had practically been thrown into his life, but although everything since that moment had gone by in a rush, it was nice to have some intelligent company. However, he still felt awkward thinking of them as his own, it was too strange.

"Now," he murmured, taking back the tracker and moving over to the computer screen. He squinted at the elaborate Gallifreyan text, and then pressed a small blue button. There was a chiming sound and something new registered on the monitor. "Just place it here . . ." He pulled a chip identical to the one embedded in the metal of the tracker from his pocket and inserted it into a slot next to the computer carefully. "Ah, there we go."

"Just to clarify, now we can pinpoint the exact location of the Kheprions and therefore we can target their base. After that you plan on infiltrating it and shutting down the conversion system, but you've yet to brainstorm a complete plan for that part yet, correct?" Aiden asked, coming close to breaking the Doctor's record for quick speaking.

"Yup, exactly," his father answered simply. "You pretty much covered it all. Look, the red icons are the Kheprions." He gestured for Aiden to come closer and then indicated to a bunch of small dots. The boy smiled.

"They look so harmless as tiny dots," he remarked.

As the two males had been talking, Eva had slipped out of her comfy chair and made her way over to the double-doors of the ship. Gingerly she pulled the handles back and peeked outside curiously, expecting to see a quiet London alleyway. Instead, millions of rows of black beady eyes stared into her face unflinchingly. Eva breathed in quickly and swiftly squeezed the door shut again, pressing her back up against the wood.

"Doctor?" she tried, her soft voice failing to get his attention. It reached her brother, however, who was accustomed to listening out for his sister, and he nudged the Doctor, nodding in Eva's direction.

"Hmm, what?" the time lord asked absentmindedly.

"Are you sure that the device only allows us to track them, and not the other way around as well?" She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear neatly, nervousness causing her level tones to waver slightly.

"Pretty sure, why do you ask?"

"I ask because there is a huge group of the Kheprions standing outside your ship, and they appear to be waiting for you to come out, which means they've somehow managed to not only find us in the busy city of London, but see through the chameleon circuit as well."

The Doctor froze and looked back at his daughter in surprise.

"Uh oh."

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End file.
